CITY ROOM; Off Air for Decades, Canteen Girl Resurfaces

By COREY KILGANNON

Published: April 8, 2013

CORRECTION APPENDED

Every Friday evening over NBC radio airwaves – or short-wave overseas – homesick troops during World War II were told to “drop in at the canteen” for comforting chat and songs by a pretty, young actress named Phyllis Jeanne Creore.

“Here is your Canteen girl, Phyllis Jeanne,” a voice would say, and then Ms. Creore’s tender voice would croon the comforting lyrics to her signature (and self-written) song “This is My Wish.”

The Canteen Girl is no longer on the air but she is still welcoming the occasional visitor. She is 97 and lives – for 60 years now – alone in a six-room, elegantly furnished apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Central Park Reservoir.

On the show, which began broadcasting in August 1942, she sang requests and urged soldiers to stay safe and write her letters, which she has saved all these years in scrapbooks. Some were from stateside troops and their families, and some arrived from overseas.

“I saved them because they were flattering and touching and a part of history,” she said recently as she pulled out sheaves of yellowed, crinkling letters. “If they wrote asking for pictures, I would send them, and I’d be the pinup girl for whole camps.”

“I didn’t talk about this for 70 years, and it’s just been an astonishing experience to have it all come back into interest again,” she added, referring to the recent attention to her past because of a video display about her that is part of an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society about New York City during World War II.

Suddenly the Canteen Girl is a hit again. Old friends have been getting in touch, and strangers, too. Those nod-as-you-pass neighbors are now rushing up to greet her.

“My building’s co-op board made me the guest of honor at their holiday party, and gave me a whole page in the newsletter,” she said. “All these young people seem to be on fire about it, telling me, ‘I never knew anything about this.’”

Ms. Creore came to New York City from her native Rochester in 1937, and began getting acting and radio work, and singing in hotel nightclubs. As a “Miss Television” at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, in RCA’s exhibit building, she greeted fairgoers and demonstrated the new magic of television by interviewing celebrities outside the booth, for broadcast on TV sets inside.

Ms. Creore lived at the Rehearsal Club, a residence for actresses at 47 West 53rd Street that inspired the 1937 film “Stage Door” with Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball.

After World War II broke out, Ms. Creore spotted a notice on the club’s bulletin board seeking volunteers for the Stage Door Canteen, an outreach center in the basement of a West 44th Street theater where theatrical celebrities would greet service-members.

“The notice said, ‘Our boys are coming through New York and need to be danced with, and fed, so won’t you volunteer?’” she recalled.

As a junior hostess at the canteen, which inspired the 1943 film “Stage Door Canteen,” Ms. Creore conceived of the idea to create a “canteen on the air,” she recalled, and she approached NBC officials with a sample script and a theme song she wrote called “This Is My Wish,” which opens with these lines.

“I wish you luck in everything you doThat all your cares will disappear from viewAnd hopes of happiness will all come trueThis is my wish.”

The show became popular and do did Ms. Creore. There were evenings at the Stork Club and mentions in the columns of Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen. She performed on radio dramas with actors likes Richard Widmark and on many television shows.

Her career slowed down in the 1950s when she married a film producer, Ted Westerman, who died years ago, and had a daughter, Cynthia, who now lives in Florida.

So now the Canteen Girl lives alone among her souvenirs. She has piercing blue eyes that don’t need eyeglasses and she is as elegant as that vivacious young woman in the glossy publicity photos.

She does not have a computer or a cellphone. Her rent is steep, as is the cost of having food delivered. She wonders if she will outlive her savings, and she hates to be alone on the holidays. She is jealous of that smooth-faced, popular young Canteen Girl smiling at her from her scrapbook.

A couple dozen new friends, and some old ones, gathered recently at the Historical Society to celebrate Ms. Creore’s 97th birthday, with cake and Champagne, and a singing trio made up of sisters who performed Andrews Sisters songs. A group of Rehearsal Club alumni sang Ms. Creore’s signature song as a comfort not to the troops, but to her.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO: Phyllis Jeanne Creore, who sang to troops during World War II, is part of a New York exhibition. (PHOTOGRAPH BY HIROKO MASUIKE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Correction April 10, 2013, Wednesday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: The City Room column in some editions on Monday, about Phyllis Jeanne Creore, who played the Canteen Girl on NBC radio during World War II, misstated her age when she came to New York City from Rochester in 1937. Now 97, Ms. Creore says she was either 21 or 22 when she arrived — not 24. (She could not have been 24 in 1937.)